If you are a Veteran or service-member you’ve probably heard it before -- someone finds out your military affiliation (or you are strutting around in that old, too tight-fitting RANGER school T-shirt that your wife accidentally keeps leaving in the rag bin) so they reach out their hand and say, “Thank you for your military service!” And unless you are angling for a free Veteran meal at Applebee’s or something you probably did what I usually do – you thanked them, let them know you didn’t really do much, and went on your way feeling a bit funny inside.

Teenage runaway at Fort Benning's School for Boys

Let’s face it, we didn’t join the military to serve anybody. In fact, I joined at the tender age of 18 to run away from home (signed the week after my birthday, left for boot camp three days after my high school graduation). I went back in a second time because the Army funded my four years of beer and pool at Providence College and I owed them.

Most men of my generation joined because we wanted to do more than just hang out at our old high school haunts working a dead-end job.

Our fathers were drafted, our grandfathers served in WWII, and it was just REASONABLE for us to follow in that tradition. Whether drafted or volunteered, military service was once considered a REASONABLE duty of citizenship.

For young people today it still is, despite the on-going never-ending “war on terror” (if they can get in -- you need to be like an Eagle Scout, have a College Degree, or preferably, be a motivated young female to even get in these days). It’s a sign of our collective national selfishness that military service is no longer considered REASONABLE but EXTRAORDINARY. All you need to do is complete basic training and people will treat you like a war hero. But you’re not. And every Veteran knows that -- whether they served in combat or not. We are not heroes just because we performed our REASONABLE service.

Believe it or not, this is not a mug shot! 11B AIT veteran tryin' to be hard -- Note 1983 era military haircut...

So it is in the Kingdom of God. Making our life a “living sacrifice” i.e. putting God’s Will first in our life and fulfilling the obligations we have toward Jesus Christ as believers, all we do for Jesus, is merely our reasonable service. Grace doesn’t mean we don’t “do anything.” Grace means Jesus paid the full-price for our salvation. All we need to do is believe and follow Him… which is reasonable. But following Jesus means we are going to have to sacrifice our life. And for that we deserve… nothing. He already gave us all we never deserved by paying for our sin with His own blood on Calvary’s Cross. We should thank Him and soldier on. It’s reasonable.

Thanking a Vet for their service is a nice civil gesture so please continue. But be leery of putting them on a pedestal most of us Vets know we really don’t deserve. The ones you SHOULD thank, who you MUST thank and whom you CANNOT thank are the ones who can’t receive thanks… because they made the ultimate sacrifice and never came home. Those are the ones the rest of us know deserve all the thanks we receive in their place.

And the rest of America should strive to be a little better because of them. It’s reasonable.